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Hey everyone, you're watching Markets Outlook. I'm your host, Jen Sassie. On today's episode, I'm joined by VanEck CEO Jan Van Eck. Hey Jan.
I'm doing well, thank you. It is a fantastic Monday morning. I got to ask you, what have you been watching this morning? What's keeping you up at night when it comes to the crypto markets?
I wouldn't say up at night, but I'm definitely watching Bitcoin. You know, we're here in the fourth quarter of 2025. It's been a different, more muted Bitcoin appreciation cycle and I'm curious as to how the year-end action looks relative to 2026 and whether we'll get like sort of the happening correction.
How do you think Bitcoin's going to end the year?
Well, Bitcoin's really underperformed gold because gold had this sort of parabolic rise over the last several months and it's now correcting pretty hard as one would have expected and Bitcoin's at least today and over the last several days pretty resilient against that. So, it's recapturing, if you will, the kind of lost ground it had against gold. I'm, you know, we, as a shop, are hoping for all-time highs in Bitcoin before year end. So, that's really what we're our base case is. But so that's where we're at right now.
You know, well over 150 per coin, 150,000. So, one never knows. That's really our base model. I would say with the Fed cutting interest rates, it should all work together, but you never know.
I want to dig a little bit deeper into that. You know, you mentioned interest rate cuts coming up. This administration has generally been seen good for crypto from a policy and regulation standpoint, but on the other hand, we have geopolitical tensions that tend to shake crypto markets as it does other markets. How do you reconcile these two forces as an investor? What do you watch more? What's more important to you?
I care most really about adoption of Bitcoin. I always like to say sort of like a child since we've been following it closely as a firm since 2017 when it was $3,000 a coin. And part of that maturation cycle, Jen, is just different investors getting involved. We're just now maybe seeing some of the giants in the wealth management space start adopting Bitcoin and allocating to them in portfolios. It really was even six months ago it was mainly retail and hedge funds. So if we see the kind of professional wealth community come in, that would be great. I think one of their concerns or one of my concerns about Bitcoin is its high correlation to risk-on and NASDAQ, and I think that's been kind of holding it back a little bit this cycle. So again, today is a risk-on day and Bitcoin's doing well. So I'm not sure we may not be tested in the short term, but that's one of the, adoption by wealth and then relationship to risk-on assets are two of the things I focus on.
Do you think that correlation with other risk-on assets will break?
I'd like to see it be able to break, let's put it that way. It was really there was no correlation up until 2020, like zero, and then suddenly it basically jumped with a kind of COVID euphoria and all that in markets and so it sort of wavered but it's been at that higher level. So, I'm hoping for regime change at some point, but I guess it doesn't really matter. As long as gold and Bitcoin and markets are all going up, then it's fine for investors. But my expectation is that again, Bitcoin has this sort of secular, like I say, child growing up kind of dynamic to it. So, I'd like to see that more in evidence.
For a long time, Bitcoin and Ether were almost like the gold and silver of crypto. It seems like that is diverging a little bit now. Curious to hear how you're watching Ether.
Definitely would reject that narrative. Because basically Ethereum plays such a different role and the services it provides through its blockchain and it's gone through its own evolution with move to proof of stake and the L2 economics. And kind of my general point to investors is if you don't follow this really closely, my test question is do you know what Ethereum's market share is? And if you can't answer that question, we've been offering actively managed funds and that's really the direction strategically even though we have single token funds, we're moving more towards actively managed solutions.
I know that you're also focused on the picks and shovels of the crypto ecosystem. Ethereum is like one of the foundational layers I would say to the picks and shovels especially on the back of the Genius Act passing in the United States. Tell me a little bit more about that kind of foundational layer that Ethereum provides for the ecosystem. I think a lot of new investors in the space might still be trying to understand that.
For sure. I mean, this has been such a transformational year 2025. Just to sort of set the stage, I think the Genius Act was the biggest piece of bank deregulation in US history because it allows tech companies effectively to get involved in the payment system, which has never happened. So the banks no longer have this monopoly, and Ethereum is probably the go-to blockchain for Wall Street, is the way I put it. The real question though is where are the economics going to all lie? Are a lot of corporations going to use sort of permission blockchains or variations on Ethereum, or are they going to use the public blockchain and kind of who's getting the economics? So just like Coinbase has its own L1, are a lot of other companies going to follow their lead there? And that would have negative consequences for Ethereum even though its protocol is the gold standard for Wall Street. So that kind of play out is difficult to figure out for the average investor.
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